Babycenter.com: A Nifty Tool to Calculate the Cost of Raising a Child

Children are expensive. At least that’s the conclusion I reached after running some numbers through the Child Cost Calculator at Babycenter.com. You’ll find the calculator under the tools menu item. With two teenagers running around our home, we already knew how expensive raising kids can be. But seeing that six digit number on the computer screen tends to bring a new reality to the equation. Here’s how the calculator works.

You first enter some basic information such as the year the child was born, your income range, number of parents in the home and the region where you live. This generates a more detailed list of expenses along with an estimate of the cost to raise a child. You can then refine the estimate if you’d like. My estimated cost came in at over $350,000:

I think I’ll show my teenagers the results of these calculations the next time they ask for a raise in their allowance. And if you’d like to estimate the first year cost of a newborn, Babycenter.com offers the Baby Cost Calculator, too. Happy parenting!

Rob founded the Dough Roller in 2007. A litigation attorney in the securities industry, he lives in Northern Virginia with his wife, their two teenagers, and the family mascot, a shih tzu named Sophie.

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